How Brand Alliances Acquire New Households and Retain Them Across Adjacent Categories in Consumer Packaged Goods

• Thanawat Srisuk

  Department of Business Administration, Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, 680 Nittayo Road, That Choeng Chum Subdistrict, Mueang Sakon Nakhon, Sakon Nakhon 47000, Thailand

  Author

• Prasert Kongsiri

  Faculty of Management Sciences, Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, 2 Ratchathani Road, Nai Mueang Subdistrict, Mueang Ubon Ratchathani, Ubon Ratchathani 34000, Thailand

  Author

Brand alliances are often judged by launch visibility, short-run sales, or investor response, yet those metrics do not reveal whether the alliance actually changes the household composition of demand. A jointly branded product can post strong early volume while merely redistributing purchases among households that already belonged to one partner or the other. This paper studies a different question: when do brand alliances recruit households that are genuinely new to the host category, and when do those recruited households remain active after the first purchase? Using household-level scanner data from consumer packaged goods markets, the analysis tracks first purchase, repeat purchase, basket expansion, and cannibalization for allied and matched single-branded product introductions over a twelve-year period. The design links product launches to prelaunch household repertoires, allowing the overlap between partner audiences to be measured directly rather than inferred from category similarity. The results show that alliances recruit more category-new households than comparable single-branded launches, but the gain is sharply nonlinear. Recruitment is highest when the two partner brands have moderate prelaunch audience overlap rather than very high or very low overlap. Repeat purchase follows a different pattern. Alliances with balanced partner prominence and substantive product integration retain households more effectively, whereas heavily asymmetric or purely endorsement-oriented alliances generate more trial but weaker stabilization. The evidence also indicates that alliance performance depends on who is being recruited. Among households already loyal to the primary brand, a sizable portion of alliance volume displaces incumbent products. Among households entering from adjacent repertoires, the alliance produces broader baskets and higher twelve-month revenue. The findings suggest that household acquisition and household retention are separate margins of alliance value and should not be collapsed into a single launch metric.

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